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and county mental hospitals. Four million American adults under 65 years of age are on Supplementary Security Income (SSI) today because they are disabled by mental illness. One in every fifteen young adults (18-26 years old) is “functionally impaired” by mental illness. Some 250 children and adolescents are added to the SSI rolls daily because of mental illness.

      Psychiatric drugs are now being given more frequently to children. Dr. Mercola wrote a special report on Ritalin on June 30, 2011 (available through Mercola.com). He reported:

      Consider the drug Ritalin (used for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). U.S. pharmacists distribute five times more Ritalin than the rest of the world combined, according to Dr. Samuel Epstein's Cancer Prevention Coalition (CPC). In all, 60 to 90 percent of U.S. kids with attention deficit disorders are prescribed this powerful drug, which amounts to 3 percent to 5 percent of U.S. children and teens on Ritalin.

      By definition, Ritalin stimulates your central nervous system, leading to side effects such as: increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, increased body temperature, increased alertness, and suppressed appetite. Research has also linked Ritalin with more severe health problems such as cancer as well as an increased probability of suicidal thoughts and behavior. Ritalin has the same pharmacological profile as cocaine, yet its effects are even more potent. Using brain imaging, scientists have found that, in pill form, Ritalin occupies more of the neural transporters responsible for the "high" experienced by addicts than smoked or injected cocaine.

      Unfortunately, diagnosing ADHD really comes down to a matter of opinion, as there is no physical test, like a brain scan, that can pinpoint the condition. There's only subjective evaluation, so it's easy for kids to be misdiagnosed.

      As for antidepressants, they have been shown to cause both suicidal and homicidal thoughts and behaviors. For example, seven of the last 12 school shootings in the USA were done by children who were either on antidepressants or going through withdrawal from using them.

      Whitaker reports that the increase in the use of psychiatric medications has led to a rise in disability and clearly, a fattening of the bank accounts of pharmaceutical companies. Whitaker wrote, “In 1985, outpatient sales of antidepressants and antipsychotics in the US amounted to $503 million. Twenty-three years later, US sales of antidepressants and antipsychotics reached $24.2 billion, nearly a fiftyfold increase. Total sales of all psychotropic drugs in 2008 topped $40 billion” (p. 320).

      The following is reprinted from a section of the introduction in Spiritism and Mental Health (Bragdon, 2012):

      We are currently facing a sharp increase in the cost of health care, as well as an exponential increase in people on disability because of mental health issues. In the USA, our conventional medical establishments have the resources to administer excellent emergency medical care, but, according to the World Health Organization (2000) our overall health system performance ranks 37^th, and Americans rank 72^nd in overall level of health compared to 191 countries—even though we have the most expensive health care system in the world. We can extrapolate that our knowledge and practices regarding the healing of mental illness and chronic degenerative physical disease is not exemplary.

      This obviously signals a need to look outside our borders for ideas about how to improve our health care systems, to prevent disease and maintain wellness. Possibly we can also learn more about the causes of illness.

      Whitaker (2010)…reflects that our top medical authorities still do not know the real cause of mental illness. While many benefit from conventional psychotropic drugs the majority of individuals who use these powerful medications do not experience significant or sustained improvement or are unable to tolerate their long-term use because of associated toxicity and serious adverse effects including weight gain, loss of libido, gastro-intestinal distress, and in some cases, worsening of the mental health problem for which they are being treated. Whitaker suggests that conventional psychiatry relies too heavily on psychotropics and too little on viable non-pharmacologic alternatives:

      The drugs may alleviate symptoms over the short term, and there are some people who may stabilize well over the long term on them, and so clearly there is a place for the drugs in psychiatry’s toolbox…However, (given the long-term outcome research) psychiatry would have to admit that the drugs, rather than fix chemical imbalances in the brain, perturb the normal functioning of neurotransmitter pathways…[Psychiatry has to figure out] how to use the medications judiciously and wisely, and everyone in our society would understand the need for alternative therapies that don’t rely on the medications or at least minimize their use. (Whitaker 2010, p. 333)

      Recent systematic reviews of quality placebo-controlled trials bear out Whitaker’s observations and provide confirmation that available pharmacologic treatments do not adequately address common mental health problems including major depressive disorder (Kirsch 2008; Thase 2008; Fournier, DeRubeis, Hollon, Dimidjian, Amsterdam, Shelton, and Fawcett 2010) bipolar disorder (Fountoulakis 2008), schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders (Dixon, Dickerson, Bellack, Bennett, Dickinson, Goldberg, Lehman, Tenhula, Calmes, Pasillas, Peer, and Kreyenbuhl 2009; Tajima, Fernandez, Lopez-Ibor, Carrasco and Diaz-Marsa 2009), dementia (Birks 2006; Lam, Kennedy, Grigoriadis, McIntyre, Milev, Ramasubbu, Parikh, Patten, and Ravindran 2009), obsessive-compulsive disorder (Schoenfelt and Weston 2007), post-traumatic stress disorder (Berger, Mendlowicz, Marques-Portella, Kinrys, Fontenelle, Marmar and Figueira 2008), and generalized anxiety disorder (Katzman 2009). In spite of compelling evidence to the contrary, we continue to treat symptoms as if they are caused by a ‘broken brain’ in which deficiencies or “imbalances” of serotonin and other neurotransmitters are regarded by modern psychiatry as sufficient explanations of mental illness.

      In 2009, one out of eight adults in the USA was taking psychiatric medication, most believing that medications are necessary for bolstering brain function in the way that insulin is essential for the diabetic. The results to society have not been positive. In 2007 the disability rate due to mental illness was 1 in every 76 Americans. That’s more than double the rate in 1987 [a year before Prozac was introduced], and six times the rate in 1955 [before psychotropics were being used] (Whitaker 2010, p. 10). The tremendous increase in the number of people claiming disability for mental illness is an indictment of contemporary biomedical psychiatry and points to serious unresolved problems of efficacy and safety with available psychotropic medications.

      In other words, when psychiatric medications are used as the sole sources of healing and do not address the root cause of illness, they may be ineffective or result in worsening, to the point where patients turn to more potent synthetic medications sometimes resulting in debilitating adverse effects that interfere with their ability to function socially and at work. Research on the long-term effects of psychiatric medications reported by the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health in 1996 reveal that they compromise brain function rather than enhance it (Hyman 1996, pp.151-61).

      We have hunted for big simple neuro-chemical explanations for psychiatric disorders and have not found them. (Lacasse 2005, pp.1211-1216 in Psychological Medicine, 2005)

      Cultures and healing traditions outside our borders that offer effective therapies other than psychotropic drugs can add to our toolbox for improving mental health and promoting wellness. In order to transform mental health care into a more effective, more humane model it is incumbent on physicians to remain rigorously open minded about the range of alternative therapies and integrate those that work and are safe into the current model of biomedical psychiatry. Only in this way can the general population achieve a higher level of wellness.

      Techniques for Releasing Trauma

      Are there simpler and safer techniques to release the energy trapped in emotional imbalances and dysfunctional patterns related to trauma? If severe mental imbalances originate in trauma, wouldn’t it be more direct to simply resolve those traumas, rather than try to mask the results of trauma that have become the symptoms of mental imbalance?

      In the not so distant past, long-term psychotherapy and

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